Years ago I took a mindfulness class that focused on the neural plasticity of the brain. The teacher, April, was talking about how our behaviors and thoughts are patterned and those behaviors and thoughts create neural pathways in the brain. These neural pathways are reinforced when we repeat these patterns over and over again, to the point where we don’t even have to think about reacting or responding from the behaviors, thoughts, emotions, and beliefs embedded in the brain and nervous system. It becomes automatic.
Trauma also creates neural pathways in the brain. The more you reinforce a behavior born out of the trauma as a response, the stronger the impulse and the pathway. The beautiful thing about the brain, however, is that we can create new neural pathways just by making a different choice.
April compared these neural pathways to cow paths. Cows are creatures of habit. They have been known to so consistently walk the same routes in their wide open pastures that they wear thin paths into the grass. Research has shown that even if you significantly obstruct a path they’ve created they won’t choose a new route, they’ll simply walk around the obstruction and get right back on the path.
That’s why it’s sometimes so hard to create new habits. Why it takes twice the energy to do a new behavior that’s to your benefit in place of an older, less desirable behavior that is familiar and comfy.
You’re building a new bridge. You’re creating your own cow path.
By choosing a different response, you are creating new neural pathways, new realities. Just by making a new choice, you are changing your brain. By simply practicing a new behavior, you are alchemizing your own physical, chemical, and genetic makeup.
Do not ever underestimate the power you have to change your circumstance. You are a scientist, an artist, an alchemist, a magician.
This has been very much at the forefront of my own reality lately. I woke up one day the week of Christmas and felt so clear about what I wanted my identity to be.
Not that I didn’t already have a sense of myself, but to some degree the self that I had been embodying had been one that does not align with who I felt my self becoming. I had remained quite enmeshed with a version of me that did not leave space for me to embrace a newer, high version that wanted to hold a completely different energy in my body and field than the one I had been posturing. It is a very interesting felt sense to try to convey with words.
Essentially, a wave of knowing rushed through me that felt like a door opening. Beyond the threshold was the life and career I’ve been dreaming. Beyond the material aspects of that, which I do believe are still a very valid part of my desire, I could so easily access the FEELING of who I dreamed of being. This felt noteworthy.
For many years I’ve yearned for money, success, thriving businesses, even certain kinds of relationships. While having a knowing of what it is that I desire is totally reasonable - necessary even - desiring it places it on a pedestal. It puts those things just out of reach, perpetuating the belief that I don’t have it yet and that I even potentially CAN’T have it. That I must not be worthy or deserving or “ready”; healed enough, evolved enough, or just plain enough to receive the thing.
I realized that at the root of my desire for all of those things was actually a desire to FEEL a certain way. It would be great to have a lot of money and a full schedule of clients so I can finally leave my 9-5, to have those aligned relationships, to travel the world, etc. But what I really wanted was:
To feel secure. I believed I could only feel secure when I had X number of dollars and a curated community.
To feel expansive. I believed I’d finally feel expansive when I was fully immersed in my dream actualized - business ownership, full schedule of clients, doing the work in the world that lights me up.
To feel grounded. I believed that I could only be fully grounded when I was finally embodying the version of me that was, again, immersed in my dream actualized.
To feel in flow. I believed I must not be in flow because I had yet to quit my 9-5 and, again, immerse myself in my dream actualized. That I must be doing something wrong.
To feel fully expressed. I believed I could not fully express my self without being fully resourced financially. While this is true in some aspects when it comes to hobbies or taking classes/lessons in the things that interest me, it generally requires very little money - often none at all - to express the truth of who I am in my heart of hearts on a day to day, even moment to moment basis.
To feel joyful and pleasureful. I believed I couldn’t feel or didn’t have space in my day to day to feel joy and pleasure amidst working a job I don’t enjoy, amidst being where I don’t necessarily want to be.
To take this kind of inventory was illuminating. I’ve spent so much timing in waiting, basically saying to myself “I’ll be the person I want to be when I have enough money, when I land the dream job, when I (insert any point of perceived arrival), THEN I will be who I so desire to be.”
Hog wash. It really is hog wash. I have access to EVERY SINGLE WAY THAT I WANT TO FEEL, RIGHT NOW. I have felt all of those feelings before; I can name times in my life where I had access to them and felt them repeatedly, showing me that they’re not only warranted when I reach these points of arrival I seem to think are somewhere outside and separate of me but that I am capable of feeling them right now.
So one day, around Christmas, I just decided to start feeling all of those things everyday. I said to myself “ok, you want to feel expansive and in flow and heart-centered and expressive and secure? Then feel expansive and in flow and heart-centered and expressive and secure.”
I essentially got sick of my own shit. I grew tired of wishing I could be a holistic coach again and work for myself and quit my draining 9-5. I grew tired of dreading the day upon waking. I asked myself what would make me want to grab life by the balls and how I could begin to show up to my life in a way that expresses the truth that is in my heart.
So everyday, I meditate. And while I meditate, I imagine the version of me that I want to be. The version of me that is a full time holistic coach, consultant, and Akashic Records reader and teacher. A version of me who is working with my ideal client avatar doing all three of those things, sometimes combined. I embody in my meditation the feelings that version of me illicit. I center myself in abundance, expansion, joy, pleasure, safety. I sit in the version of me who is already doing all of those things.
Joy is the ultimate magnetic state. Plus, it just FEELS GOOD to be in those feelings. It does not feel good to me to be in dread, in waiting, or in the mindset of “When x, then y.” To shift into the energy of the identity I desire to be in my morning meditation, and then to come back to those feelings over and over and over again throughout the day, just feels good. Honestly, I just want to feel good. Most of the time, that is enough.
In a matter of one month, I’ve made very kismet and aligned connections. I’ve had the pleasure of taking on new clients, and ones that fit my desired avatar. I’ve been presented with opportunity after opportunity. By aligning to my desire and embodying the feelings my desire illicit, I am beginning to see evidence of my new reality and identity. I’m trusting myself more, as well as the process itself. I am immersed deeply in presence, continually identifying more and more abundance that already exists and cultivating more and more gratitude for that. Receiving more clues, more messages, more evidence. Continually paying attention, researching, and data collecting, but from a place of heart centered curiosity rather than forcing a reality to come through in a way that it doesn’t want to.
Because I truly believe in my desires. The question is no longer whether I’m worthy or deserving of it. The question is: do I WANT it? That’s the measure.
The interesting thing to me is that I’m actually living out the coaching that I do with people; taking inventory of what’s currently in their engery/field, guiding them toward aligning them with who they are or want to be in their heart of hearts, building a solid foundation of self trust in that, and putting them on a clear path toward their desire. Personall, professionally, creatively, relationally, spiritually, and everywhere in between. Creation at its finest.
It’s truly magic. And all you have to do is be yourself.
Laughing until the cows come home.
Tallyho,
Jenny